Want to Write a Guest Post for New World Notes? Send Me Your Nutgraf First!

I often get contacted by folks interested in writing for New World Notes, but they're not necessarily interested in becoming a regular columnist like Iris Ophelia or Chestnut Rau. So I'm opening up the chance to write New World Notes guest posts on any topic related to what you read here: The arts, culture, business, science, and technology of virtual worlds, primarily Second Life, but also OpenSim, Blue Mars, and other user generated content-oriented worlds. However, if you want to write a post, don't just send me the whole editorial -- first, send me the nut graf of the post you want to write.

What's a nutgraf? Short for "nutshell paragraph", it's this:

Nut graf is an editorial slang term used by editors at newspapers and magazines, as well as copy editors. The term nut graf refers to the sentence (or sentences) that summarize the essence of a story. In journalism, a nut graf puts the story in context and tells readers why the story matters. Many editors would say the nut graf is the most important section of a story, since it tells the readers why they should be reading the story.

A nut graf can be one to several sentences, and especially for beginning writers, it's the heart of any good article or essay. I'll even go so far to say this: If you can't express the point you're trying to make in a nut graf, you don't actually understand the point you want to make. (Or how to communicate it, which is effectively the same thing.)

That said, here's some general New World Notes guest post ideas:

• A how-to instructional
• General advice
• Top 10/Top 5 lists -- always a popular read
• Opinion and analysis
• Personal experience anecdote which suggests a general theme

Example of a nut graf? Here's one from this personal anecdote post:

[A]t first, her male avatar was mainly meant to be her mannequin, for learning how to make men's fashion. But after putting on the skin of a man for awhile, she wound up learning a lot more about herself, and the dynamics between the sexes.

Or this one, from an editorial I wrote last week:

Education and enterprise applications of Second Life have not succeeded on a wide scale, and using SL for architecture, while extremely promising, will probably take 10 years to gain any traction, if ever. However, Second Life machinima has already gained mass market adoption, and until SL's user base grows, it's probably the only real world application that will.

Everything else in the post is meant to support the backbone which is the nut graf. That's why it's so important.

So when you got a basic idea for a guest post, send me your nut graf -- email hamlet at secondlife dot com. (And please please please I beg you like a dog, do not send me Second Life notecards, they are a pox upon the system, and they make baby Jesus cry. Notecards will be hurled screaming into the bonfire of my mind, never to be heard from again.) If the nut graf works, we'll take it from there; I'll tell you the word count I'm looking for, the other elements I need for the whole post. If it needs more work before it's a nut graf to do us both proud, I'll offer advice as I can. Yes I will pay, though alas I can't pay much, and yes you can promote your metaverse business/brand/project in a bio line at the bottom of the post.

Can't wait to see what guest post ideas start coming my way. Got questions not answered here? Post in Comments below, dammit!

Comments

[Arcadia Codesmith]

I find writing for the internet to bear an uncanny similarity to pouring water into the ocean.

And while that doesn't keep me from doing it, it does mean that I don't give it the best distilled and purified artisian spring water.

That's assuming I can still distill water. The apparatus has been gathering dust for many years.

Time to give this overextended metaphor a burial at sea.

[SecondLie]

Thanks for the offer, but I think I'll stick to Twitter.

[Delinda Dyrssen]

hmm... would you paying in Lindens or or US$?